When you are typing on your mobile phone, you are already envied by more than 400 million people

Author: Reliable A Xing

Internet products pursue the ultimate in "user experience" and try to achieve minimalist and fool-like operation of functions. Since many product managers are young people themselves, most of their apps, applets, or other integrated software and hardware products have the default target group of young people.

Regardless of the rough granularity of the concept of "young people", if you compare the user habits of young people with the elderly, you will find that most elderly people are not interested in mainstream product interfaces and There is an inevitable disconnect between guiding habits and responding to various emerging technology products, which is the so-called "digital divide."

The recently released seventh census big data shows that the proportion of people over 60 years old in my country has reached 18.70, with the number of people being 264,018,766. As the willingness of young couples in my country to have children decreases, the average life expectancy increases, and the aging of society will accelerate.

From the perspective of the threshold of information access and the inclusive benefits of digital technology dividends, some groups are in a natural "vulnerability" and require special care from the whole society.

In addition to the large base of elderly people, there are also some blind, illiterate, and deaf-mute groups who also face huge obstacles in accessing mobile phones. It is understood that there are 17 million blind people and 27 million hearing-impaired people in our country. There are approximately 54.66 million to 79 million illiterate people in our country. In addition, there are also a large number of cognitive disabilities. According to data from the Information Accessibility Research Association, approximately 416 million people in my country have certain barriers to accessing information due to various reasons.

At this stage, the first step to access mobile information on mobile phones is the input method. Generally, users who are stuck in this link and cannot "pass" smoothly can be called people with information disabilities. From a big data perspective, when many of us ordinary users use the “simplest” input method, they are actually deeply envied by 400 million people.

01

Barrier-free information communication starts with the input method

Let’s first tackle the information barriers Focus on serving the elderly’s Internet access.

"Everyone has an elderly person, and everyone will grow old." How to allow the elderly to enjoy the fruits of development in the mobile Internet era is indeed inseparable from the development support of various mainstream Internet products, especially those occupying the An input method manufacturer with a large market share.

Taking my personal experience as a parent as an example, my mother usually uses mobile phones that I don’t use. It wasn’t until she used the Smartisan Pro2 phone that she felt a little more comfortable with it, because this phone has an elder mode that can use it. Make the system fonts and APPs larger, and make phone calls loud enough. Some time ago, in order to teach her how to collect payments faster when running a small retail business, I directly took a screenshot of her WeChat payment code as a lock screen saver. Since my mother has never read a book and doesn’t know many words, she can usually only speak to us by voice. She can’t understand what I type when I type. I believe that this kind of “user pain point” of information barriers is not unique among the elderly in China.

I have been looking for a mobile phone input method suitable for the elderly. Since I am a code word person, I have used the iFlytek input method, Sogou input method, Baidu input method, and the default input methods of various mobile phones such as Apple, Huawei, and Nut for a period of time. My personal feeling is that third-party input methods have great advantages over the phone's own system in pinyin arrangement order, fuzzy sound confusion processing, automatic association of emoticons, and input accuracy. Among third-party input methods, iFlytek input method It is better than Sogou Pinyin input method in speech recognition.

In my opinion, input methods that can be used by the elderly without barriers must meet additional functional requirements:

(1) Be able to receive text messages, WeChat, etc. on the elderly’s mobile phones Convert information into voice playback;

(2) You can also convert your own voice output words into text that the other party looks quick to send;

(3) In voice or handwritten font size It should be larger and does not look strenuous;

(4) Supports dialect voice-to-text input, some elderly people do not speak Mandarin;

(5) Can support handwriting and pinyin , OCR scanning text input, translation and other functions, which are convenient for some elderly people who are used to handwriting but do not know pinyin;

(6) The input method includes pictures, emoticons or emoticons that support social chat scenes. Blessings, replies, etc.

Taking these conditions together, the current iFlytek input method and the elders mode that comes with the APP are the most user-friendly for the elderly to use the Internet. My mother installed the iFlytek input method on her Smartphone phone.

At the 3rd Science and Technology Accessibility Development Conference on May 21, 2021, by watching the live broadcast of the "Information Accessibility Conference" video account, I learned that as a basic tool for online communication for the elderly, currently The number of users of the elder mode of iFlytek input method has exceeded 1 million, and iFlytek input method has also become an important participation result of this technology accessibility conference.

02

The trend of digitally inclusive development of Internet products that are “age-adaptable”. What is the inspiration for the success of iFlytek input method?

The current mobile Internet has reached its peak in terms of user growth. From seizing the dividends of Generation Z to competing for the lower market, the "age-appropriate" transformation of products on the to C side can not only specifically meet The needs of specific groups of people demonstrate the social responsibility of leading Internet companies, and it is also a "niche market" with huge potential that cannot be ignored.

How can you see it? According to Rogers' "Innovation Diffusion Curve", generally when the product market matures and gains a lot of popularity and even becomes a common lifestyle for most people, there are still about 34 late-stage mass users and about 16 "laggards" facing new things. "In fact, APP products are facing a similar situation.

The "ageing-appropriateness" of basic tool products is actually a solution for the product itself to actively meet the needs of different levels. It is a necessary stage for the "national-level input method".

In view of the input method used by the elders, we need to provide specialized solutions to solve the problem of "blind vision, deafness, slow speech, and unclear recognition" of the elderly. According to the iFlytek Input Method Business Director of HKUST Manager Cheng Kun said, "As of late May 2021, the "Elders Mode" of iFlytek Input Method has served more than 1 million elderly people since its launch. At the same time, the average daily voice usage in this mode exceeds 2 million. Already The true meaning is to make artificial intelligence technology the guardian of parents. ”

In developing the elder mode of iFlytek input method, iFlytek input method targets the usage behavior and pain points of the elderly, in terms of “vision” and Development is done from the perspective of "interaction"; the design refines the three principles of "bigger, more eye-catching, and more concise"; at the interaction level, it adopts the three principles of "removing jewelry, eliminating pop-ups, lowering the level of interaction, and enriching interactive feedback". These are proven product concepts.

During the product development process, the iFlytek input method elder mode is worthy of "aging-appropriate" learning from other applications: for example, the input method is deeply involved in user research in communities and senior universities, and a large number of elderly people's opinions have been collected. Demand, new functions are handed over to test user experience, and the product is improved and iterated based on seed user feedback.

In terms of providing a more humane experience for the functional details of voice input for the elderly, iFlytek has taken into account the accent, speaking speed and articulation clarity of the elderly in different regions to provide corresponding solutions, as follows:

(1) In terms of dialect recognition, iFlytek input method covers seven major dialect areas, mobilizing iFlytek's accumulation in speech recognition technology, supporting and adopting intelligent speech recognition in 23 dialects.

(2) For the elderly who speak slowly, iFlytek Input Method enables long text recognition by default, making it easier to speak and recognize without interruption.

(3) In terms of speech recognition, the speed of iFlytek voice input (conversion to text) is not slower than that of typing Pinyin. In terms of speech recognition model for the elderly, iFlytek has independently optimized it and achieved a universal recognition rate. Reaching 98, since text can be input accurately even under noisy and weak network conditions.

(4) Supports handwriting function. The difference between iFlytek input method and other input methods is that it can superimpose handwritten words and present the effects in sequence.

(5) For illiterate elderly people, the screen reading function of iFlytek input method allows users to copy the text in the input field and click the read aloud button to hear it.

It can be said that iFlytek Input Method uses intelligent voice technology and humanized product design to solve the problem of "connecting to the Internet" for the elderly. It has become an important tool and prerequisite for resolving information accessibility. As a third-party input method for aging transformation, iFlytek’s experience is worth learning from other head Internet applications.

03

Information accessibility process, input method innovation has unlimited potential

iFlytek input method After using it for a period of time, I found that it is also suitable for users with poor eyesight. For example, the iFlytek input method can intelligently identify the voice of the owner who issued the command in the presence of noise interference. It can be used for voice commands on smart devices other than mobile phones. During input; it can adjust the meaning of the output sentence according to the situation, self-correct during speech recognition of long sentences, automatically segment sentences and add punctuation marks, and is also very practical for oral writing and inspirational creation. This is the accumulation of iFlytek's AI technology The accumulation of hard work has yielded results.

As mentioned above, information barriers are not limited to the elderly. How to help disabled people such as blind people or deaf-mute people enjoy the fruits of Internet development is also of great significance. It is understood that in addition to the elders mode, iFlytek input method has also launched an "accessibility mode" for the visually impaired, thus taking into account the online needs of the blind.

"Accessibility mode" is based on the voice feedback provided by blind or visually impaired users, and reads out the content touched, selected or activated by the user; it is based on the TalkBack function in the mobile phone and combined with the global application of the mobile phone. Products that have been redeveloped and optimized with voice reading functions, text-to-speech settings and other functions can be widely used among the blind and are a boon to the visually impaired, just like a city's blind walkways and subway elevators for the blind. Setting up such that people with disabilities can feel the warmth of society, the difference between great Internet products and general products is to care more about user groups, and through sufficient grassroots research and product development to help laggards keep up with the development of the times and create conditions to solve life difficulties.

Fortunately, not only are more and more Internet applications opening up the process of adapting to aging, but the emergence of artificial intelligence technology can lower the threshold for the elderly, visually impaired, hearing-impaired and other people to obtain information in society.

In order to benefit more people who are troubled by information barriers, the input method and other Internet-appropriate applications can be jointly recommended and popularized to increase the application rate during development:

( 1) Iflytek Input Method is a customized input method that cooperates with more mobile phones, and places elder mode and accessibility mode in the system settings.

(2) iFlytek Input Method can jointly cooperate with members of the Information Accessibility University Conference such as WeChat, Alipay, Didi Taxi, Meituan Takeout, etc. to continuously reduce the impact of the elderly and disabled people on the Internet. Threshold encouragement, improvement of aging-friendly products based on big data analysis and user participation, and virtual medal incentives for young people to recommend to their families can help the whole society continue to implement the concept of information accessibility and inclusiveness.

(3) Accessibility modes on mobile phones and input methods also need to cooperate with social organizations such as China Disabled Persons’ Federation, Disabled Persons’ Games, schools for the blind, schools for the deaf and mute, etc., to ensure that users’ specific use problems can be solved. Scenario requirements, and solve their usage pain points in product detail iterations.

Conclusion

iFlytek input method elder mode and accessibility mode are the humanistic care and corporate social responsibility of iFlytek products The product is free and open, and it is a truly national-level basic product for entry-level Internet access.

We hope that more and more elderly and disabled people will be able to access the Internet normally, that the whole society will show more care and understanding, that Internet companies and platforms will have a tradition of "respecting the elderly" in product culture, and gradually accumulate technology for aging. , make products that solve the inconveniences of mobile life for people with disabilities become public welfare, use specific application scenarios, and humanize the application of smart technology, continue to effectively bridge the "digital divide", and make digital achievements benefit everyone.

About the author

Li Xing (Reliable Ah Xing), public account: Reliable Ah Xing, foreign master of philosophy, founder of Reliable Ah Xing People, focusing on analyzing Internet business models and building mobile marketing methodology systems